Alderney

Alderney (; french: Aurigny ; Auregnais: ) is the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands. It is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a British Crown dependency. It is long and wide.

The island's area is , making it the third-largest island of the Channel Islands, and the second largest in the Bailiwick. It is around to the west of the La Hague on the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy, in France, to the northeast of Guernsey and from the south coast of Great Britain. It is the closest of the Channel Islands both to France and to the United Kingdom. It is separated from Cap de la Hague by the dangerous Alderney Race (french: Raz Blanchard).

As of March 2018, the island had a population of 2,019; natives are traditionally nicknamed after the cows, or else after the many rabbits seen in the island. Formally, they are known as ''Ridunians'', from the Latin .

The only parish of Alderney is the parish of St Anne, which covers the whole island.

The main town, St Anne, historically known as ('The Town'), is often referred to as ''St Anne's'' by visitors and incomers, but rarely by locals (who, in normal conversation, still most frequently refer to the area centred on Victoria Street simply as ''Town''). The town's "High Street", which formerly had a small handful of shops, is now almost entirely residential, forming a T-junction with Victoria Street at its highest point.

The town area features an imposing church and an unevenly cobbled main street: Victoria Street (, the English name being adopted on the visit of Queen Victoria in 1854). There is one school (providing both primary and secondary education), a post office, and hotels, as well as restaurants, banks and shops. Other settlements include Braye, Crabby, Longis, Mannez, La Banque, and Newtown.

History

Alderney shares its prehistory with the other islands in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, becoming an island in the Neolithic period as the waters of the Channel rose. Formerly rich in dolmens, like the other Channel Islands, Alderney with its heritage of megaliths has suffered through the large-scale military constructions of the 19th century and also by the Germans during the World War II occupation, who left the remains at Les Pourciaux unrecognisable as dolmens. A cist survives near Fort Tourgis, and Longis Common has remains of an Iron Age site. There are traces of Roman occupation''A Visitor's Guide to Guernsey, Alderney and Sark", Victor Coysh, 1983 including a fort, built in the late 300s, at above the island's only natural harbour.

The etymology of the island's name is obscure. It is known in Latin as ''Riduna'' but as with the names of all the Channel Islands in the Roman period there is a degree of confusion. ''Riduna'' may be the original name of Tatihou, while Alderney is conjectured to be identified with ''Sarnia''. ''Alderney''/''Aurigny'' is variously supposed to be a Germanic or Celtic name. It may be a corruption of ''Adreni'' or ''Alrene'', which is probably derived from an Old Norse word meaning "island near the coast". Alternatively it may derive from three Norse elements: ''alda'' (swelling wave, roller), ''renna'' (strong current, race) and ''öy'' or '' -ey'' (island).
Alderney may be mentioned in Paul the Deacon's ''Historia Langobardorum'' (I.6) as 'Evodia' in which he discussed a certain dangerous whirlpool. The name 'Evodia' may in turn originate from the seven 'Haemodae' of uncertain identification in Pliny the Elder's '' Natural History'' (IV 16 (30) or Pomponius Mela's ''Chronographia'' (III 6,54).

Along with the other Channel Islands, Alderney was annexed by the Duchy of Normandy in 933. In 1042, William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy (later William the Conqueror, King of the English) granted Alderney to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. In 1057, the bishop of Coutances took back control of the island.

After 1204, when mainland Normandy was incorporated into the kingdom of France, Alderney remained loyal to the English monarch in his dignity of Duke of Normandy.

Henry VIII of England undertook fortification works, but these ceased in 1554. Essex Castle perpetuates the name of the Earl of Essex, who purchased the governorship of Alderney in 1591. Prior to the Earl's execution for treason in 1601, he leased the island to William Chamberlain, and Alderney remained in the hands of the Chamberlain family until 1643. From 1612, a Judge was appointed to assist the Governor's administration of Alderney, along with the Jurats. The function of the Judge was similar to that of the Bailiffs of Guernsey and Jersey, and continued until 1949.

During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Alderney was held by a Parliamentary garrison under Nicholas Ling, Lieutenant-Governor. Ling built Government House (now the Island Hall). The de Carterets of Jersey acquired the governorship, later passing it to Sir Edmund Andros of Guernsey, from whom the Guernsey family of Le Mesurier inherited it, thus establishing a hereditary line of governors that lasted until 1825.

Henry Le Mesurier prospered through privateering, and moved the harbour from Longis to Braye, building a jetty there in 1736. Warehouses and dwellings were built at Braye, and the export of cattle generated wealth for the economy. The Court House was built in 1770 and a school in 1790. A Methodist chapel was constructed in 1790, following John Wesley's visit in 1787. An Optical telegraph tower was constructed above La Foulère in 1811, enabling signals to be relayed visually to Le Mât in Sark and on to Guernsey – early warning of attack during the Napoleonic Wars was of strategic importance. With the end of those wars privateering was ended and smuggling suppressed, leading to economic difficulties.

The last of the hereditary Governors, John Le Mesurier, resigned his patent to the Crown in 1825, and since then authority has been exercised by the States of Alderney, as amended by the constitutional settlement of 1948.

Victorian era

The British Government decided to undertake massive fortifications in the 19th century and to create a strategic harbour to deter attacks from France. These fortifications were presciently described by William Ewart Gladstone as "a monument of human folly, useless to us ... but perhaps not absolutely useless to a possible enemy, with whom we may at some period have to deal and who may possibly be able to extract some profit in the way of shelter and accommodation from the ruins." An influx of English and Irish labourers, plus the sizeable British garrison stationed in the island, led to rapid Anglicisation. The harbour was never completed – the remaining breakwater (designed by James Walker) is one of the island's landmarks, and is longer than any breakwater in the UK.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Alderney on 9 August 1854.''Portrait of the Channel Islands'', Lemprière, London 1970 The Albert Memorial and the renaming of Rue Grosnez to Victoria Street commemorate this visit.

At the same time as the breakwater was being built in the 1850s, the island was fortified by a string of 13 forts, designed to protect the harbour of refuge. The accommodation quarters of several of the forts have been converted into apartments; two are now private homes; and one, Fort Clonque, at the end of a causeway that can be flooded at high tide, belongs to the Landmark Trust and can be rented for holidays. Scenes from the film '' Seagulls Over Sorrento'' were shot at Fort Clonque in 1953.

Some of the forts are now in varying stages of dereliction, the most ruined being Les Hommeaux Florains, perched on outlying rocks, its access causeway and bridge having been swept away long ago. Houmet Herbé resembles a Crusader castle with its squat round towers. Like many of the forts, it included such apparently anachronistic features as a drawbridge and machicolation, which were still common in military architecture of the period.

Second World War

In June 1940, almost the entire population of Alderney of 1,400 was evacuated to Britain. Most went on the official evacuation boats sent from mainland Britain. Some, however, decided to make their own way, mostly via Guernsey, but due to the impending occupation many found themselves unable to leave and were forced to stay on Guernsey for the duration of the war. Eighteen Alderney people elected not to leave with the general evacuation. However, boats from Guernsey came and collected some of them before the German Army arrived, on the basis that it was best for their personal safety. During the Second World War, the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles that was occupied by Germany, although other parts of the Empire were occupied by the Axis powers.

The Germans arrived to a nearly deserted island, and began to follow their orders to fortify Alderney as part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. In January 1942, they built four camps in Alderney: two work camps, Lager Helgoland and Lager Borkum, and two concentration camps, Lager Sylt and Lager Norderney. The jail behind the main police station was used by the Nazis as a prison.

The camps were built by the Nazi Organisation Todt (OT) to house the labour used to build fortifications including bunkers, gun emplacements, tunnels, air-raid shelters and other concrete and field fortifications. Lager Norderney, containing Russian and Polish POWs, and the Lager Sylt camp holding Jewish slave labourers, were transferred to SS administration in March 1943 under the control of ''Hauptsturmführer'' Maximilian List. There are 397 graves in Alderney, which when added to the men who died in ships, takes the total to over 700 out of a total inmate population of 6,000 who lost their lives before the camps were closed and the remaining inmates transferred to France in 1944.

On the return to their island, Alderney evacuees had little or no knowledge of the crimes committed on their island during the occupation, because by December 1945, the first date civilians could return home, all the slave labourers had been sent away and the majority of the German troops left behind were not senior staff. Evidence, however, was all over the island, with concrete fortifications and graveyards for the prisoners kept there during the occupation.

The Royal Navy blockaded the islands from time to time, particularly following the liberation of Normandy in 1944. Intense negotiations resulted in some Red Cross humanitarian aid, but there was considerable hunger and privation during the five years of German occupation, particularly in the final months when the Germans themselves were close to starvation. The Germans surrendered Alderney on 16 May 1945, eight days after the Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe, and seven days after the liberation of Guernsey and Jersey. 2,332 German prisoners of war were removed from Alderney on 20 May 1945, leaving 500 Germans to undertake clearing up operations under British military supervision.

The people of Alderney could not start returning until December 1945 due to the huge cleanup operation needed simply to make the island safe for civilians. When the islanders returned home they were shocked to see the state of the island, with many houses completely derelict: the Germans had burned anything wooden, including front doors, for fuel. Archival and object evidence of the general evacuation in 1940 and the subsequent occupation of Alderney can be found in the Alderney Society Museum.

A series of tunnels also remain in place on Alderney, constructed by forced labour. These are in varying degrees of decay, being left open to the public and the elements.

Since 1945

For two years after the end of the war, Alderney was operated as a communal farm. Craftsmen were paid by their employers, while others were paid by the local government out of the profit from the sales of farm produce. Remaining profits were put aside to repay the British Government for repairing and rebuilding the island. The local people resented being unable to control their own land; this led to the United Kingdom Home Office setting up an enquiry that led to the "Government of Alderney Law 1948", which came into force on 1 January 1949. The law organised the construction and election of the States of Alderney and the justice system; and, for the first time in Alderney, the imposition of taxes. The legislature and judiciary were separated. The position of Judge, who had headed the island's government since the resignation of the last Governor in 1825, was abolished, and the Jurats were removed from their legislative function.

Because of the island's small population, it was believed that the island could not be self-sufficient in running the airport and the harbour, or providing services that would match those of the UK. Taxes were therefore collected into the general Bailiwick of Guernsey revenue funds at the same rate as in Guernsey, and administered by the States of Guernsey. Guernsey became responsible for providing many government functions and services.

The 20th century saw much change in Alderney, from the building of the airport in the late 1930s to the death of the last speakers of the island's Auregnais language, a dialect of the Norman language. The economy has gone from depending largely on agriculture to earning money from the tourism and finance industries. E-commerce has become increasingly important, and the island hosts the domain name registry for both Bailiwicks and dozens of gambling website operators. Alderney has a full regulatory authority in operation.

Politics

The States of Alderney (French: États d'Aurigny) is the legislature of the island; it sends two representatives to the States of Guernsey as well. The origin of the States is unknown, but it has operated from the Middle Ages.

The States of Alderney consists of the President, directly elected every four years, and ten States Members, half elected every two years for a four-year mandate. The whole island is a single constituency. William Tate was elected president in June 2019.

While Alderney enjoys full autonomy in law (except in matters of foreign affairs and defence, like the other Channel Islands and the Isle of Man), under the provisions of a formal agreement (known as "the 1948 Agreement") entered into between the Governments of Alderney and of Guernsey, certain matters have been delegated to Guernsey. These are known as 'the transferred services'.

Transferred services include policing, customs and excise, airport operations, health, education, social services, childcare and adoption. (The States of Alderney retains policy control of aviation to and from the island). In return for providing the transferred services Guernsey levies various taxes and duties on Alderney.

Immigration is the responsibility of the UK (UK law applies), with day-to-day operations carried out by the Guernsey Border Agency. In addition to the transferred services, both the UK and Guernsey may legislate on other matters with the consent of the States of Alderney.

Law

Legal system

The Court of Alderney exercises unlimited original jurisdiction in civil matters and limited jurisdiction in criminal matters. The Court sits with a Chairman (the Judge of Alderney) and at least three of the six Jurats. Appeals are made to the Royal Court of Guernsey, which also exercises some original jurisdiction in criminal matters in Alderney, and thence to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

Taxation

For a number of taxation purposes, Alderney is treated as if it were part of Guernsey. Income Tax is administered by the Guernsey Revenue Service but there are some differences between Alderney and Guernsey Income Tax, specifically in the matter of the cap on Income Tax (which is set lower in Alderney than in Guernsey).

From 2016, Alderney took back control of Tax on Real Property (TRP). From 2021, Alderney will be responsible for setting the rate and collecting the Taxation on Real Property (TRP) with Occupier's Rates (OR) now being included within that bill. Alderney will also receive Motor Fuel Excise Duty and Document Duty on property conveyances.

Climate

Its climate is temperate, moderated by the sea, and summers are usually warmer than elsewhere in the British Isles.

Under the Köppen climate classification, Alderney has an oceanic climate, however it exhibits characteristics of a Warm-summer Mediterranean climate(Csb). Alderney has cool, wet winters and mild summers with moderate rainfall. February is the coldest month with an average high of 8 C (47 F), and a low of 4 C (40 F). July and August are the warmest months, with an average high of 19 C (66 F), and a low of 13-14 C (56-57 F). October is the wettest month with of rain, and April is the driest month with . Snow is very rare. Average Sunshine hours are around 1780 annually.

Geography and natural history

Alderney is similar to the other Channel Islands in having sheer cliffs broken by stretches of sandy beach and dunes. The highest point is on the central plateau of the island at .

Alderney and its surrounding islets support a rich flora and fauna. Trees are rather scarce, as many were cut down in the 17th century to fuel the lighthouses on Alderney and the Casquets. Those trees that remain include cabbage trees (due to the mild climate – often miscalled "palms" but of the asparagus family), and there are some small woods dotted about the island. Puffins on Burhou and gannet on Les Étacs (popularly called Gannet Rock) just off Alderney are a favourite of many visitors to the island.

About a quarter of Alderney hedgehogs are of the "white" or "blonde" variety, which does not carry fleas. These are not albinos, but descent of rarely met blonde European hedgehogs, with a blonde pair released on the island in the 1960s. The island had its own breed of cattle, called the Alderney. The pure breed became extinct in 1944, but hybrids remain elsewhere, though no longer on Alderney. In August 2005, the west coast of Alderney and associated islands, including Burhou and Ortac

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